Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Gay, Lesbian, Bi-Sexual, Transgender ....Hyperandrogenism??

GLBT may need to add another discriminated group. These are women who have been barred from world-class track and field competition because of high natural levels of testosterone.

The International Association of Athletics Federations (I.A.A.F.) has two years to prove that women with testosterone levels over 10 nanomoles per liter are not qualified to participate in female competitions.

On Monday, July 27, 2015 the Court of Arbitration for Sport made the above ruling on this issue for Dutee Chand.




I am going to post the article at the end of this posting, but I wanted to quote a couple of snippets from the Court of Arbitration for Sport:


  • ... sex is part of a spectrum, not a this-or-that definition easily divided for matters such as sport
  • ... sex in humans is not simply binary
  • Nature is not neat. There is no single determinant of sex.
I would give up one of my Social Security checks to hear our Supreme Court Justices comment on this. 
Hey, this could be the next great talking point for the presidential candidates.

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

WHEN YOU GOT NOTHING TO LOSE AND THEN YOU DO

 Nick Denton, founder and chief executive of Gawker and Steve Huffman, chief executive of  Reddit have run smack up against what New York Times (All The News That's Fit To Print) reporter, Jonathan Mahler describes as a 'difficult transition'.

The transition is all about money. What else if you are in a maturing business? As reporter Mahler notes, Ellen Pao a former chief executive of Reddit, faced a kind of Hobson's Choice.

“A large portion of the Internet audience enjoys edgy content and the behavior of the more extreme users; it wants to see the bad with the good, so it becomes harder to get rid of the ugly,” she wrote. “But to attract more mainstream audiences and bring in the big-budget advertisers, you must hide or remove the ugly.”

Sunday, July 5, 2015

"Why Is My Poop Green?"

Seth Stephens-Davidwitz did an admittedly unscientific study of topics search on Google during different times of the day.

Here are a few of his findings:

8:04 am to about 1:30 pm: Unblocked Games

5:30 am: Is the peak time for searches for weather, prayer and news

12:30 am: Is a peak time for suicide information.

2:00 am to 4:00 am: This is the time for big questions, i.e. What is the meaning of consciousness? Does free will exist? Is there life on other planets? (Mr. Stephens-Davidwitz opines "The popularity of these questions late at night may be a result, in part, of cannabis use (See Below)

1:00 am to 2:00 am: Are peak times for the search question: How to roll a joint.

Late night is also the highest rate for "symptoms" (i.e. heart attacks, colon cancer, H.I.V., A.L.S., strokes, brain tumors, etc.).

12:00 am to 2:00 am: Porn for men, for women 'Literotica' is searched between 3:00 am to 5:00 am. Vibrators are big around 4:00 am and 'how to put on a condom' about 10:30 pm.

'Why is my poop green'? Seems have two peak times.  The first one between 5:00 am and 6:00 am with the second peak occurring between 6:00 pm and 7:00 pm.

Seth Stephens-Davidwitz, Days of Our Digital Lives, New York Times, Sunday Review, Page 4, July 5, 2015, 

Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Original Intent

"Original Intent" is a term used to describe legal scholars and judges who subscribe to "The theory of interpretation by which judges attempt to ascertain the meaning of a particular provision of a state or federal constitution by determining how the provision was understood at the time it was drafted and ratified."

Both Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas are originalists. I think it to be a simple-minded way to deal with changing times and so does Thomas Jefferson, one of The Quartet, in Joseph J. Ellis new book.

Quoting from this book and attributed by Mr. Ellis to Thomas Jefferson:

"Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment, I know that age well; I belonged to it and labored with it. It deserved well of its country...
 But, I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind".


http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Original+Intent